The Sequel to the Most Aggressive Webhost

Three years ago, 1and1 arrived in America with astonishing offers. Now a sister company is here, with special offers to anyone who wants to join its channel.

by Alex Goldman ISP-Planet Managing Editor [October 21, 2008]

It's an aggressive offer: no monthly fees for a year. Fasthosts is now a subsidiary of United Internet, the parent company of 1and1, which we call the most aggressive webhost, so it should be no surprise that Fasthosts is entering the North American market the way 1and1 did: with an extreme promotion.

The offer is intended to allow independent ISPs to outsource a single customer to fasthosts for free, as a trial. The Fasthost Reseller Package is free for 12 months, an offer that expires on December 31, 2008. After that, the package is $50 per month.

Fasthosts claims to be the top reseller in the UK, with ten years of reseller experience, and says it will only offer service through the channel in the U.S.

Richard Stevenson, head of corporate communications for Fasthosts, says the company researched the U.S. reseller market and was surprised by what it found. "You're asking, 'what are you doing here? What distinguishes us?' The U.S. reseller market is a developed market with substantial players already in it, but we were surprised at the amount of restrictions on their offerings."

In contrast, he says, Fasthosts allows resellers to build whatever plans they want and sell them at whatever price they choose.

As another incentive, Fasthosts promises to never charge for bandwidth or disk space, removing a mechanism that punishes your best customers for their success. Of course, if you choose to charge for bandwidth or disk space, you may do so, and that will be 100 percent profit for you.

"If someone manages to sell for $500 per month a service we're charging them $5 per month for, then they will grow rapidly and that will benefit us in the long term," claims Stephen Holford, chief marketing officer for Fasthosts.

In a press release, he adds, "we are delighted to offer Americans a really effective way to create their own hosting company. Our unlimited web space and bandwidth removes the risks that often deter entrepreneurs, so more people can now tap into this lucrative industry."

Packages
Although ISPs are free to build any package they like, most should restrict themselves to offering a few packages. If, however, your web business is more like that of a premium web designer, you will welcome the ability to have a different package for each of your unique customers, Holford says.

Furthermore, Fasthosts has built some sample hosting packages and is offering one of them for free: 10 GB of disk space, 5 FTP accounts, unlimited e-mail accounts, and ASP, Perl, and PHP5 options, all for free, again giving the reseller pure profit on any sale.

If you register for a free account, you will obtain access to Fasthosts' proprietary system. I think ISPs should register for a free account if only to obtain pricing intelligence from Fasthosts. The system allows you to build a package and shows you the price you would pay for each element of the package.

Under the hood
Fasthosts may not own a data center itself, but the company is using a 1and1 data center built to the specifications you'd expect: redundant bandwidth, backup power, reinforced roof, fire suppression, and so on.

Even the cooling system is powerful. It consists of three chiller plants (two plus one spare) each of which has a capacity of 300 tons.

The data center has two separate generators, each with their own automatic transfer switch.

But there's more that Fasthosts can do for you.

Fasthosts can provide you with marketing material and training, if you wish.

Perhaps you're interested in Fasthosts' proprietary software. Holford says the system is version 5 of the software that the company has used during its ten years. He adds that the UK is still on version 4.

It is designed to deliver a clean interface and allow you to easily add complex options. On the other hand, if you want to use your technology skills, you can go behind the interface and, for example, build your own LAMP stack.

In the UK, Holford says, Fasthosts' customers range from highly knowledgeable ISPs to computer stores that have zero skills of their own and rely completely on Fasthosts.

Those computer stores can still use a drag and drop interface to upload files with FTP, conduct SEO, and build websites. "We anticipate skill gaps in our customers," says Holford.

The company is hiring technical support staff in Philadelphia. The staff, Holford says, will be providing tier 1 support to resellers, and will be very high quality. "We hired clever people," says Holford. "Our tier 1 staff are tier 2 quality. Customer service is key to us."

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